Taglines: The man who made 007 a household number.
Diamonds Are Forever movie storyline. When Bond investigates mysterious activities in the world diamond market, he discovers that the evil Ernst Blofeld is stockpiling the precious gems to use in a deadly laser satellite capable of destroying massive targets on land, sea, and air.
Bond, with the help of beautiful smuggler Tiffany Case, sets out to stop the madman, but first he must grapple with a host of enemies. He confronts offbeat assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, as well as Bambi and Thumper, two scantily-clad beauties who are more than a match for Bond in hand-to-hand combat. Finally, there’s the reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte, who may just hold a vital clue to Blofeld’s whereabouts.
Diamonds Are Forever is a 1971 spy film and the seventh in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth and final Eon film to star Sean Connery, who returned to the role as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, having declined to reprise the role in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).
The film is based on Ian Fleming’s 1956 novel of the same name, and is the second of four James Bond films directed by Guy Hamilton. The story has Bond impersonating a diamond smuggler to infiltrate a smuggling ring, and soon uncovering a plot by his old enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld to use the diamonds to build a space-based laser weapon. Bond has to battle his enemy for one last time, to stop the smuggling and stall Blofeld’s plan of destroying Washington, D.C., and extorting the world with nuclear supremacy.
After George Lazenby left the series, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli tested other actors, but studio United Artists wanted Sean Connery back, paying a then-record $1.25 million salary for him to return. The producers were inspired by Goldfinger; as with that film, Guy Hamilton was hired to direct, and Shirley Bassey performed vocals on the title theme song. Locations included Las Vegas, California, Amsterdam and Lufthansa’s hangar in West Germany.
Diamonds Are Forever was a commercial success, and received positive reviews upon initial release, but it retrospectively was met with criticism for its humorous camp tone. The film marked the final appearance of the SPECTRE organization (though not by name) in Eon’s Bond films until the 2015 film of the same name.
“Diamonds Are Forever”, the title song, was the second James Bond theme to be performed by Shirley Bassey, after “Goldfinger” in 1964. In an interview for the television programme James Bond’s Greatest Hits, composer John Barry revealed that he told Bassey to imagine she was singing about a penis. Bassey would later return for a third performance for 1979’s Moonraker. The original soundtrack was once again composed by John Barry, his sixth time composing for a Bond film.
With Connery back in the lead role, the “James Bond Theme” was played by an electric guitar in the somewhat unusual, blued gun barrel sequence accompanied with prismatic ripples of light, in the pre-credits sequence, and in a full orchestral version during a hovercraft sequence in Amsterdam.
About the Story
James Bond—agent 007—pursues Ernst Stavro Blofeld and eventually finds him at a facility where Blofeld look-alikes are being created through surgery. Bond kills a test subject, and later the “real” Blofeld, by drowning him in a pool of superheated mud. While assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd systematically kill several diamond smugglers, M suspects South African diamonds are being stockpiled to depress prices by dumping, and orders Bond to uncover the smuggling ring. Posing as professional smuggler and assassin Peter Franks, Bond travels to Amsterdam to meet contact Tiffany Case. The real Franks shows up, but Bond intercepts and kills him, and switches IDs to make it seem like Franks is Bond. Case and Bond then go to Los Angeles, smuggling the diamonds inside Franks’ corpse.
At the airport Bond meets his CIA ally Felix Leiter, then travels to Las Vegas. At a funeral home, Franks’ body is cremated and the diamonds passed on to another smuggler, Shady Tree. Bond is nearly killed by Wint and Kidd when they put him in a casket to be burned in a cremation retort, but Tree stops the process when he discovers that the diamonds in Franks’ body were fakes planted by Bond and the CIA.
Bond tells Leiter to ship him the real diamonds. Bond then goes to the Whyte House, a casino-hotel owned by the reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte, where Tree works as a stand-up comedian. Bond discovers there that Tree has been killed by Wint and Kidd, who did not know that the diamonds were fake.
At the craps table Bond meets the opportunistic Plenty O’Toole, and after gambling, brings her to his room. Gang members ambush them, throwing O’Toole out the window and into the pool. Bond spends the rest of the night with Tiffany Case, instructing her to retrieve the real diamonds at the Circus Circus casino.
Tiffany reneges on her deal to meet back with Bond and instead flees, passing off the diamonds to the next smuggler. However, seeing that O’Toole was killed after being mistaken for her, Tiffany changes her mind. She drives Bond to the airport, where the diamonds are given to Professor Metz, a laser refraction specialist, who is followed to a remote facility. Bond enters the apparent destination of the diamonds; a research laboratory owned by Whyte, where a satellite is being built by Metz. When Bond’s cover is blown, he escapes by stealing a moon buggy and reunites with Tiffany.
Bond scales the walls to the Whyte House’s top floor to confront Whyte. He is instead met by two identical Blofelds, who use an electronic device to sound like Whyte. Bond kills one of the Blofelds, which turns out to be a look-alike. He is then knocked out by gas, picked up by Wint and Kidd, and taken out to Las Vegas Valley, where he is placed in a pipeline and left to die.
Bond escapes, then calls Blofeld, using a similar electronic device to pose as Whyte’s assistant Saxby. He finds out Whyte’s location and rescues him, Saxby being killed in the gunfight. In the meantime, Blofeld abducts Case. With the help of Whyte, Bond raids the lab and uncovers Blofeld’s plot to create a laser satellite using the diamonds, which by now has already been sent into orbit. With the satellite, Blofeld destroys nuclear weapons in China, the Soviet Union and the United States, then proposes an international auction for global nuclear supremacy.
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Directed by: Guy Hamilton
Starring: Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Charles Gray, Lana Wood, Jimmy Dean, Bruce Cabot, Norman Burton, Joseph Fürst, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, Leonard Barr, Lois Maxwell
Screenplay by: Richard Maibaum, Tom Mankiewicz
Production Design by: Ken Adam
Cinematography by: Ted Moore
Film Editing by: Bert Bates, John Holmes
Set Decoration by: John P. Austin, Peter Lamont
Art Direction by: Bill Kenney, Jack Maxsted
Music by: John Barry
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: December 14, 1971 (West Germany), December 17, 1971 (USA premiere), December 30, 1971 (UK, premiere)
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